Forecasting it thus, Judson lost no time on the summit of mysterious disappearances.  Choosing the shortest path he could find which promised to lead him down to the mining hamlet at the foot of the westward-fronting slope, he set his feet in it and went stumbling down the steep declivity, bringing up, finally, on a little bench just above the mine workings.  Here he stopped to get his breath and his bearings.  From his halting-place the mine head-quarters building lay just below him, at the right of the tunnel entrance to the mine.  It was a long log building of one story, with warehouse doors in the nearer gable and lighted windows to mark the location of the offices at the opposite end.

Making a detour to dodge the electric-lighted tunnel mouth, Judson carefully reconnoitred the office end of the head-quarters building.  There was a door, with steps giving upon the down-hill side, and there were two windows, both of which were blank to the eye by reason of the drawn-down shades.  Two persons, at least, were in the lighted room; Judson could hear their voices, but the thick log walls muffled the sounds to an indistinct murmur.  On the mountain-facing side of the building, which was in shadow, the ex-engineer searched painstakingly for some open chink or cranny between the logs, but there was no avenue of observation either for the eye or the ear.  Just as he had made up his mind to risk the moonlight on the other side of the head-quarters, a sound like the moving of chairs on a bare floor made him dodge quickly behind the bole of a great mountain pine which had been left standing at the back of the building.  The huge tree was directly opposite one of the windows, and when Judson looked again the figure of a man sitting in a chair was sharply silhouetted on the drawn window-shade.

Judson stared, rubbed his eyes, and stared again.  It had never occurred to him before that the face of a man, viewed in blank profile, could differ so strikingly from the same face as seen eye to eye.  That the man whose shadow was projected upon the window-shade was Rankin Hallock, he could not doubt.  The bearded chin, the puffy lips, the prominent nose were all faithfully outlined in the exaggerated shadowgraph.  But the hat was worn at an unfamiliar angle, and there was something in the erect, bulking figure that was still more unfamiliar.  Judson backed away and stared again, muttering to himself.  If he had not traced Hallock almost to the door of Flemister’s quarters, there might have been room for the thin edge of the doubt wedge.  The unfamiliar pose and the rakish tilt of the soft hat were not among the chief clerk’s remembered characteristics; but making due allowance for the distortion of the magnified facial outline, the profile was Hallock’s.

Having definitely settled for himself the question of identity, Judson renewed his search for some eavesdropping point of vantage.  Risking the moonlight, he twice made the circuit of the occupied end of the building.  There was a line of light showing under the ill-fitting door, and with the top step of the down-hill flight for a perching-place one might lay an ear to the crack and overhear.  But door and steps were sharply struck out in the moonlight, and they faced the mining hamlet where the men of the day shift were still stirring.